


Control

by Cornelius_Podmore



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 10/10 story u should def read it, Addiction, Adventure, Blood ment., Death ment., Fanfiction, Fantasy, Gen, George Weasley fanfiction, George Weasley love story, Multi, Non-con mention/implication (brief), Potential for underage sex, Romance, Self-harm ment., Um . . . ?, Underage sex ment., Whoops my hand slipped and I made another Weasley kid lol, harry potter fanfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-15 22:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7241308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornelius_Podmore/pseuds/Cornelius_Podmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meredith Addams is hardly 14 years old and she's already a girl with a past, and not a bright and cheery one. She's got scars to help her forget the past, and she's got scars to make her remember. And she's got some scars she can't quite explain. She has no knowledge of her magical heritage until she receives a Hogwarts letter, 3 years late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who is Meredith Addams?

**Saturday morning, August 6th**

**How many days are in summer vacation? Technically I think it’s a little over two months but after the first fifteen days, when the heat and the lack of imposed structure lose their initial charm, the months and the hours begin to blur together in all the sweat and free-time you’re drowning in.**

**Abington’s temperature is peaking this week, higher than anyone’s seen it in at least a decade. The wind breathed its last shaky breath weeks ago. I don’t think I’ve heard the rustle of leaves in a month.**

**My neighbor, it seems, is the only person who has not forsaken the outdoors for the luxury of air conditioning. That would be the pre-pubescent little fucker who lives next door with the parents who are never home and an unlimited supply of internet pornography—and I only know this because I was burdened with a perfect view of his bedroom window.**

**Anyway, when he’s not inside watching porn or trying to catch me undressing in my room, he’s playing with . . . the water hose.**

**{And I had to add some dramatic build-up there because nothing has given me more grief than that kid and his fucking water hose}**

**I think his father bought it with the intentions of actually working in his own yard, but when work got in the way he gave it to Rodney, with vain hopes that that little hellion might work off some of the excess aggression and sexual frustration that apparently came with the territory of being born with a penis. Now in my opinion, this plan has been nothing but an abject failure, but god, if he doesn’t enjoy the damn thing. He likes to spray things like stop signs and neighboring houses. Bonus points if he nails a moving target like a squirrel or a car driving by, or me on my way back from a visit to town. He’s sprayed it through our open kitchen window at least half a dozen times since he woke at 8:30 this morning, and I can still hear Charlie screaming.**

**Too many days, and too many uninteresting people. But other than that, and the never-ending obstacle of being a raging, degenerate bisexual ex-addict in Virginia, I guess I’m doing alright. Rodney just sprayed the kitchen window again. Charlie is screaming. It’s fucking hot in here. That is all.**

**~Patch Addams**

 

Patch closed her journal and stared up at the lightening morning sky, only to find that it was already lit. The sun had risen and now hung brightly in the cloudless sky. She lost track of time so frequently nowadays, but counted that as a good thing.

 

Their house, with its modest yard, was at the end of the street, enclosed on three sides by several miles of forest (none of which Charlie owned, but all of which was riddled with familiar paths that Patch traveled all the time). Partially hidden under the reaching branches of an oak tree, she could see Charlie’s workshop, a simple, wooden-framed building lined with tin sheets that he had likely swiped from work. In another alcove of the yard hung a swing, which she also frequented. Other than that, the yard was rather monotonous, interrupted only by the wide, round driveway that curved up the street. While the rest of the neighborhood was made up of quaint, buttercup yellow houses trimmed in white, their house was an impressive brick structure from the 1920’s, with white columns holding up the porch and a dark blue front door.

 

Charlie had bought the impressive house for his wife before she died. After that, Charlie didn’t have the heart to sell the house, but there was no point in finishing the renovations when there was no one left to live in it. So the house sat unfinished while Charlie sunk into depression and alcoholism, filled the empty rooms with beer bottles and pills and trash. He never told her that part, but she saw it in the way his hands shook sometimes. He did tell her it was only recently he’d decided to get his shit back together. That was about the time they met.

 

“Good Morning, Meredith!” Called a familiar, too-friendly voice. Patch winced and glanced down at the faded asphalt to see Mrs. Fitz, the stereotypical middle-class white mother of two who lived in one of the aforementioned buttercup yellow houses down the road. Her hair was cut in a bob-style, chestnut brown with unnatural highlights of bleached blonde; and she wore a jogging suit. On a leash was a small Yorkie, with a bow in its hair trotting happily beside her. If everything Patch hated about living in suburbia in rural Virginia could be summed up in one person, it would probably be Mrs. Fitz.

 

“Morning, Mrs. Fitz.” Patch said cheerily. “Please, call me Patch.”

 

“Oh, I was never much for nicknames, Hun.” She said sweetly, her lips pulled tight in an artificially polite smile. “Wonderful weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

 

Patch glared at the cloudless sky as if glaring at God himself, her hands tightening on the windowsill.

 

“Sure is.”

 

If the woman were a bit closer, she might have heard the snarl in Patch’s voice.

 

“Well, you have a nice day!”

 

“You too.”

 

Patch turned away from the window, nearly panting in the heat of her room. Now that there were no stars to gaze at and her daily journal entry was tucked out of the way, she could concern herself with the necessary daily activities. She flopped over ungracefully on her bed, stretching her whole body as far as it would stretch. She’d received a whopping five hours of sleep last night, which was actually quite a lot for her.

 

 

“Morning, Patch.” Charlie greeted her when she wondered down the stairs to the kitchen. “Finally decide to come out of your room?”

 

“Only for food.” Patch commented, running her fingers through her hair, still damp from the shower. “I’m sure I’ll be back to sulking in the depths of my teenage strife in no time.”

 

“Thank God, I was starting to worry.” He shot her a look over his morning paper and took a sip of milk.

                       

She leaned leisurely on the counter and examined her adoptive parent. They were quite the pair.

 

He was a short man, lean but stocky, with brown hair cut short and skin like tanned leather, from years of working in the sun. Though he wasn’t particularly buff, his skin, calloused and scarred, was pulled tightly over taut muscle to show he was clearly in shape, and his face was perpetually in need of a shave.

 

Patch was taller than him, tall and incredibly thin and pale. Her hair was dark brown that struck red in the sun and was long and straight, with a few rebelling curls here and there. Her face was oval shaped, with angular cheek bones and shapely lips and surprisingly bright hazel eyes framed by long, dark lashes. Freckles traversed her pale cheeks and nose like stars, and she did not have much in the way of curves—just enough in the width of her hips not to look completely flat—but her body was toned and fit and perky, and while she wasn’t thrilled with it, she agreed it served her well enough.

 

She and Charlie were working together to clean up their acts. After Patch’s mother died and her house burnt down, she went into the foster care system and got herself into all kinds of trouble, drugs and sex and partying. And Charlie had become a raging alcoholic after the death of his wife all those years ago, had nearly destroyed her house and himself with it. It was only shortly after he’d decided he was tired of being drunk that he tried to contact her mother (the two had been good friends since their school years) and heard of her death and of the unfortunate condition Meredith had ended up in. This is how he came into her picture. He took Patch out of foster care less than a week after he had even properly met her. An impossibly fast time for adopting a child, it would seem, and it was only one of the things that made her suspicious of him. A single man with no kids just up and adopting a troubled teenager out of the goodness of his heart seemed unlikely. Naturally, her first instinct was that he was some sort of serial killer, or that she was going to be sold into the slave trade as a prostitute, but the first thing he did when he picked her up had earned her trust, or at least, the start of it:

 

 

_“You’re not going to trust me.” He said as a 13-year-old Patch watched him warily from the passengers’ seat of his old Ford truck. “I can see that. I wouldn’t trust me either. But I’ve got something you should see.”_

_He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cream envelope, bent, crumpled, and stained by time, with a wax seal on the front. The calligraphic_ **_A_ ** _,_ _stamped in scarlet wax smiled up at her like an old friend. She recognized both it and the envelope as those from her mother’s desk, in the library of their old house. Patch snatched it from him._

_“How did you get this?” She snapped, looking at him._

_“Dorothy sent it to me two or three years before she died. She wanted to make arrangements.” He said, ignoring her hostile attitude._

_“What kind of arrangements?”_

_“You’d find out a lot quicker if you read the note.” He said, his accent twanged around the sarcastic comment—an odd mixture of a British accent and an American one—and his lips curled into a faint smile. And then, he parked the car, cut the engine, and opened his door. “I’ll give you some time alone. Come find me when you’re done.”_

_She nodded absently, turned her eyes to the letter and gently, as if it may shatter, she pushed her nail underneath the wax seal and popped it open. The letter inside was written with a quill in red ink to match the seal, and she felt a rush of emotion at the familiar, tidy scrawl of her mother. When she felt she was brave enough, her eyes drifted down to the letter._

 

                                                                                                    

_Meredith,_

_If you are reading this, then I am so, so sorry. I’ve left you quite alone in this world, and for someone like you, how unfriendly a world it can be._

_Charles is my best friend. He has been since childhood, and you’ll find that he’s quite alone in the world too. His wife was killed right around when you were born, and he’s never found anyone else. Give him a chance, Meredith. I know you don’t trust very easily—he doesn’t either. But he’s got a big house in a nice town that’s full of those quirky little shops that you like. Bakeries and cupcakeries and antique stores and bookstores. And he’s got a nice yard and he can’t cook so you’ll have to make sure that he doesn’t starve, but he will take care of you. Let him succeed where I’ve failed. Give him a break on the whole puberty thing—he didn’t even understand teenagers when he was one, so be gentle. He’s gonna have no clue what he’s doing for a while, but I never had any clue what I was doing and you turned out just fine. I know you did._

_Remember me, baby girl. Remember how I read to you and taught you and put you to sleep in the library armchair when you were too tired to walk back to your room, and then let me go. Please. I don’t want to be the reason you have regrets. I never wanted that. And know that I love you._

_God, I love you so much._

_~Mom_

 

 

Patch couldn’t remember how long she sat in the old truck, hugging the note to her chest and crying. It was like an old wound had been ripped open again, and was more painful than ever. But it had done its purpose. After that she came to trust Charlie, or at least to understand him. Grief did ugly things to people, both of them were proof of that, but it didn’t have to be the end of them. Charlie moved her up to Virginia and she was helping him finish the renovations on his wife’s house. Both of them were working to get their issues under control, and while they didn’t talk much to each other, they’d fallen into a relationship based on mutual understanding.

 

“You’re burning holes in my paper, Patch.” Charlie said, drawing her back to the present. “Staring into space like that.”

           

She snapped out of it and strolled to the fridge, retrieving eggs, cheddar cheese, ham, and various vegetables.

           

“You want something while I’m down here?” She asked, “I’m making an omelet.”

 

“I’ll just take some ham and eggs.” He said, glancing through the paper with all the scrutiny of a jeweler inspecting a diamond.

 

They sat in comfortable silence while the ham sizzled in its pan and she pushed the whipped eggs around with a spatula so that it would not burn. As her mother had predicted, Patch had become the regular cook of the household. Of course she was used to it. Her mother couldn’t cook anything that didn’t have directions on the back of the box.

 

Leaving the empty pans on the stove, she fixed her plate and Charlie’s. She tried to make her way to the breakfast bar with both of them and nearly killed herself on a load of soaked paper towels covering the floor. The water trailed all the way down the now-closed kitchen window, across the counter, down the cabinets, and into a wide puddle on the floor.

 

“Whoops.” Charlie got up to help her. “Sorry about that. Little punk and his water hose got me again about an hour ago.” He gathered the towels up and tossed them in the trash. “I think he was aiming for the roof. Kept shouting something about birds.”

 

“He saw birds on the roof and his first instinct was to shoot them down?”

 

“He’s an 11-year-old boy. Course it was.” Charlie replied and then looked up, “Do we need to draw straws on who gets to go get the mail?”

 

Patch grimaced. Every Saturday, Rodney all but waited on his front porch, water hose held at the ready, for either her or Charlie to make the commute down the walkway to the mailbox. It was only about 25 feet, but you either had to sprint it or sneak it in order to avoid being drenched.

 

“No, you did it last week.” She said reluctantly, “I’ll do it.”

 

She placed their food on the bar and walked down the hallway, through the foyer and stepped out onto the front porch. Charlie had oiled the hinges last week so it was completely silent. Not even daring to breathe loudly, for Rodney had the hearing of a Rottweiler, she tip-toed down the front steps and padded quietly down the path to the mailbox in her bare feet, retrieving a bigger-than-usual wad of envelopes. Taking a risk, she stopped briefly to glance up at the roof. The sun was blinding her too much for her to catch any detail about the oblong shapes on the roof, but they looked like . . . owls, and she got the feeling that all of them were watching her intently. These things must be the targets of Rodney’s kitchen window attack.

 

The creak of the mailbox as she was closing it caused her attention to snap away from the roof. She’d been caught. Tucking the mail to her chest like a football, she ducked her head and broke into a sprint, a trail of water from across the fence following her all the way up to the front door.

 

She made it back to the safety of the hallway with little more than a few stray drops of water in her hair. Cursing, she sifted through the envelopes. Bills. Credit card stuff. Junk mail. Bargain Finder. Junk mail. Junk mail—hello . . . what’s this?

 

A small letter in a cream-colored envelope sat at the bottom of the pile. The scarlet wax that sealed it shut brought to memory her mother’s letter. The seal stamped into the wax was intricate and unfamiliar, and on the other side, in black scrawl, it read:

 

 

**Meredith J. Addams**

**Last bedroom on the left in the upstairs hall**

**313 Dogwood Hollow Road**

**Abingdon, Virginia**

**United States of America**

 

“Last bedroom on the left in the upstairs hall?” Patch murmured, bewildered.

 

“What?” Charlie asked, scrunching his eyebrows as she took her seat at the table. She ignored him, tossed the rest of the mail on the table, and opened the letter.

 

 

**Miss Addams,**

**I regret to inform you that you did not receive an acceptance letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You should have gotten one of these at the age of eleven years. If I am correct, you are now fourteen. I am not yet aware as to how you were excluded from the list, but rest assured I will be giving it my undivided attention. Furthermore, the new school year will be starting in September, and we would love to have you here at Hogwarts. You would have to take extra courses to make up for years lost, and I would oversee your education personally. I believe, with effort, you could become quite the astonishing witch one day.**

**Formally, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Students shall be required to report to the Chamber of Reception upon arrival, the dates for which shall be duly advised. Please ensure that the utmost attention be made to the list of requirements attached herewith. We very much look forward to receiving you as part of the new generation of Hogwarts’ heritage.**

**My sincerest apologies,**

**Albus Dumbledore**

**P.S. My condolences about your mother, she was truly an amazing woman**.

 

 

Patch dropped the letter on the table and stared at nothing, her mind whirring with questions. Her first instinct was to laugh it all off as a joke, the whole thing was so preposterous; but they had mentioned her mother. If it was a joke it was not a funny one.

           

“What is it?” Charlie asked her, though something about his voice was knowing.

 

“Apparently I’m a _wizard_.” She said, half expecting him to laugh, or look concerned for her sanity.

 

"Witch,” he corrected her, “It’s about time they got back to you. Lemme read the letter.”

 

Completely befuzzled, she watched him wordlessly as he snatched the letter from her and skimmed over it and then glanced up at her.

 

“What do you think?” He asked her, once he was done.

 

“But—I mean . . . Charlie you can’t seriously believe that this is a real _school_?

 

“Of course I do.” He said. “Your mother and I went there.”

 

 _A/N: Here's a basic character profile type thing for_ [Meredith Addams](http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=201067100)  

 


	2. Diagon Alley

             Patch stared intently at the calendar that hung on the side of the fridge, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. It was August 23. The train to Hogwarts left in exactly one week, and she had spent the last two ignoring Charlie. After all, he had lied to her. Big time. This wasn’t just a little fib, this was an entire _world_ that she belonged to, and in the year that he had been living with her he had not bothered to mention it once.

 

            _But neither did your mother._ A voice in her head reminded her, and she winced at the thought. As angry with Charlie as she was, her mother had had eleven years to mention the fact that she was a witch. Her mother hadn’t even troubled herself to write it down in the letter Charlie was to give her after she died. But she could not concern herself with blame now. Instead, she turned her attention to the more pressing matter of—

 

            “Are you going?” Charlie asked, making her jump, whip around, and almost slosh hot coffee all over herself.

 

            She sighed, and avoided his gaze. “Course not. It’s a fairytale.”

            “Fairytales aren’t real—actually, most of them are.” He corrected himself, “But my point still stands. This is real, Patch.” She rolled her eyes and turned to dump her coffee in the sink. “When has Meredith Jane Addams ever passed up an opportunity to learn something new?”

 

            “You don’t know Meredith Jane Addams, Charlie.” She grumbled. _I don’t even know who that is anymore._

“I knew of you.” He said, “You’re mother wrote me every year, even when I didn’t write back, and you were all she ever talked about.” He grabbed a mug from the cupboard and poured himself some coffee. “I know you used to hate blueberries until you tried the Toaster Strudel, and that some stupid kid pushed you off a swing on the playground and you yelled at him until he cried.” She laughed at the memories, almost somber as she wondered where that little girl had gone. “And I know that that little nine-year-old girl whose favorite book in the world was A Wrinkle In Time would have beat the shit out of you for even _considering_ the possibility of passing up a magical boarding school.”

 

            This was a valid argument. She made a noise of frustration and let her hands fall to her side. He was right. He was so, so right.

           

            She would like to pretend that she had not thought about Hogwarts or her apparent magical heritage since she got her letter, that she had written the whole thing off as an impossibility and returned to her normal life, that she was not even considering uprooting her life and flinging herself wholeheartedly into the world that, a few weeks ago, had not even existed to her. But it was. All of it was.

 

             That little girl inside of her who _still_ dusted off her copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the starry eyed girl who sat with her mother and read The Chronicles of Narnia, who lost herself for a while after her mother’s death and was fighting like hell to find herself again, the girl who still looked up at the stars in the wee hours of the night and let her self wonder and wander about what all lay beyond what she could see, all of them were standing together, smiling at her like old friends and willing her to take their hands. All of her favorite stories were sitting right in front of her, with arms wide open. There was no rabbit hole, or wardrobe, or Ms. Who whisking her away, but it was there all the same. The possibilities. The people. The _books_. As much as she would like to keep pretending that this life is enough for her, she could not resist the romance of it all, the adventure. She had made her decision the second she got the letter.

 

             “Sit down.” She ordered Charlie, and he obliged, taking a seat across from her. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Hogwarts. Where is it?”

 

             “No one knows exactly. Somewhere in Scotland.” He said, a business-like tone in his voice.

 

            “And you and Mom went there?”

 

            “Yes. You’re mother was a witch. Pretty talented one. I’m a wizard.”

 

            She narrowed her eyes at him, “Prove it.”

 

            Charlie gave a sigh of exasperation and got up from the table, exiting the kitchen and walking down the hallway. For a moment, Patch thought he’d given up, but he soon returned with a thin wooden stick.

 

            “ _A wand?_ ” She asked him derisively.

 

            “Yep. You’ll get one too.” He said, and then he pointed to his rolled up newspaper on the kitchen table and mumbled something under his breath. The paper twitched uncertainly before it sprung from the table and into mid-air. Patch looked at it, her face going white.

 

            “Okay. I believe you.” She said, and after a moment of still staring at the paper she added impatiently, “Will you put it down now? It’s freaking me out.”

 

            He snorted. “You’re gonna have to get used to things floating, Patch. And all those physics books you’ve read? Trash. All of them.”

 

            “My Mom was a wizard. _You’re_ a wizard.” She said, her head in her hands. “How did I not know that?”

 

            “Dorothy always thought it best not to rely on magic to much.” He said, “She hardly ever used it. Me, I just prefer to do things the muggle way.”

 

            “What’s a muggle?”

           

            “A non-magical person.”

 

            “Well, why did no one think to inform me that I was a witch?” She was suddenly indignant. He shrugged.

 

            “Honestly, Patch, no one knew.” He said, “Like the letter said, you were supposed to get an invitation to Hogwarts when you were 11, but you didn’t, and you’ve never once exhibited any magical power whatsoever. I just thought you were a squib, so I figured that it was best not to tell you what you were missing out on.”

 

            “A squib?” She asked.

           

            “A non-magical person born into a magical family.”

 

            She gave another noise of exasperation. “Okay, you said that fairytales were real. What’d you mean?”

 

            “Witches and wizards aren’t the only mythical creatures to exist.” He said. “Dragons, vampires, elves, centaurs, pixies, werewolves, billywigs, bowtruckles, fairies, chizpurfles, grindylows, clabberts, crups, dugbogs, erklings, firecrabs, flobberworms, ghouls, imps, knarl, kneazles, nifflers, nogtails, merpeople, leprechauns, gnomes, sea serpents, sphinx, unicorns, trolls, and the Yeti. All real.”

 

            “ . . . what the fuck is a _chizpurfle_?”

 

            “Not important.” He said, and then sternly, “ _Language_.”

 

            She grinned at this, but got distracted again.

           

            “Can I have a dragon?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

 

            He shook his head, “It’s illegal to keep them as pets.”

           

            “Illegal?”

 

            “The Ministry of Magic enforces all laws pertaining to the wizarding world.”

 

            “So they’re like . . . a government?”

 

            He smiled, “Sort of, yeah.”

 

            “Okay so is Hogwarts like a high school? Do you go for four years? Is there like a college for wizards?”

 

            Charlie sighed, rubbing his face. “You are supposed to go to Hogwarts for seven years, starting when you’re eleven. So it’s like a middle school and a high school put together.” He glanced at the refrigerator. “Can I get food or are you gonna handcuff me to the table or something?” She nodded, and he got up. While he was looking for food he continued to explain. “There are lots of higher education opportunities for wizards but it’s mostly done through independent studies and apprentice work and stuff. Nothing really organized.”

 

            “Charlie I don’t think even _I_ can learn seven years of magic in four.” She bit her lip, “Especially when I’m so knew new at this.”

 

            “Hogwarts is the best wizarding school in the world.” He said, “I would imagine that your teachers would be paying special attention to your education. Is all of this hypothetical or do you actually plan on going?” He fixed her with his signature stare, one eyebrow raised.

 

            “ . . . I thought I might give it a whirl.” She said, biting back the sudden surge of excitement she felt. He clapped her on the shoulder and then his eyes widened.

 

            “We have to go school shopping.” He said.

 

            “Wh— _now?_ ” She said.

           

            “You’ve only got a week.” He said, dumping the remaining dregs of milk in his cup down the sink.

           

            “But I don’t have money, Charlie, and—where do you even get supplies for a magical school?”

 

            “They have bookstores. Magical ones, nonetheless.” He stated levelly, and she grit her teeth. He knew how to persuade her.

 

            “I’ll go get dressed.” She said, and he smiled excitedly and took off down the hallway in the direction of the living room. She looked after him, bewildered, for a moment before taking action herself.

 

            Patch hurried upstairs to [get ready](http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=172160967), throwing on the first clothes she found, undoing her hair from the messy bun, and applying nothing to her face but mascara. Then, she rushed down to find Charlie in the living room. 

 

            He was in the living room that they barely used, the only furniture in it being a single couch, that faced the oversized fireplace on the opposite wall. The fireplace was lit for the first time since she had moved in. Above the fireplace hung the flat screen TV that Charlie bought but never used, and it was flanked on either side by floor-to-ceiling shelves. Charlie stood precariously on one of the bar stools from the kitchen trying to reach an ugly grey-green pot that sat in the corner of the very top shelf.

 

             “So . . . where are we going?” Patch asked as she watched him in mild concern.

 

             “Place called Diagon Alley,” He said, his voice straining with effort. “It’ll have everything you need.”

 

            “And where is this Diagon Alley?”

 

           “London.”

 

           Patch blanched, now fully convinced that her adoptive father had gone insane.

 

           “Quite a distance for a day trip, don’t you think?” She said, her voice a few octaves higher than usual. Two weeks ago all she had wanted was to get out of this town for a while, now Charlie was whisking her away to England to buy supplies for a magical boarding school in Scotland.

 

           “That’s why we won’t be taking a plane.” With a small hop that made the barstool creak dangerously, Charlie’s hand finally took hold of the pot and he stepped down. “We’ll be using Floo Powder.”

 

            “Is that anything like Angel Dust?”

 

            He shot her an amused look. “No.”

 

            “Too bad. That stuff was a riot.”

 

            “Sorry to disappoint.” He said dryly, “But listen carefully. You just take a handful of Floo Powder and throw it into the fire,” He took a handful of what looked like grey ash from the pot and showed it to her. “Then you shout out where you want to go and step in.”

 

            “You want me to step into a lit fireplace.” She stated, glancing from the roaring fire and back to Charlie, who was holding out the tiny jar for her to take some powder. He was staring at her expectantly and she crossed her arms. “You first.”

 

            He scoffed. “You better follow me.” He warned her before stepping forward.

 

            Taking a handful of the powder, he threw it into the hearth. The whole thing erupted in bright green flames, and without an ounce of hesitation, Charlie stepped into them.

 

            “Diagon Alley!” He said, loud and clear, and as if someone had drenched him in gasoline, the flames consumed him, burning so bright and hot that Patch had to take a step back, and then they were gone. Charlie was nowhere to be seen and the fire had returned to normal. Patch sat there for a moment, waiting for Charlie to crawl back out and tell her it was all a joke, but he did not.

           

            “Alright.” She said determinedly, “Let’s do this.” And she followed suit, throwing the powder and stepping into the fire, wincing as she thought of the last time she was this close to an open flame. Her memories hurt a lot more than the green fire did. It almost felt pleasant against her skin, actually, but she knew Charlie would be waiting. She closed her eyes tight, bracing herself for what was about to happen.

 

            “Diagon Alley!” She yelled, and the pleasant feeling of the flames engulfed her entire body. She felt like she was spinning very fast, and something was pulling her in a certain direction at the same time, and as fast as it happened it was gone.

 

            The sound that met her ears was not the one of their quiet living room, but of a busy street, and sunlight shined through her eyelids. Someone grabbed her arm.

 

            “There you are.” Came Charlie’s familiar voice. “Welcome to Diagon Alley.”

 

            She opened her eyes and waited for them to adjust to the light. When they did, her jaw dropped. The shopping area in front of her was full of movement. People in funny-looking robes and pointy hats bustled past her impatiently. She could hear the squawks and screeches of strange animals, people yelling over the dull roar of the crowd in different languages and exotic accents. A delicious smell was drifting through the open doors of a bakery to her left, and she could see a crowd of young kids hovering around something that sat in a shop window.

 

             "Whoa . . .” She said, trying to take in everything at once. She gazed into shop windows distractedly as Charlie led them through the crowd. Some of the things she saw looked rather expensive, and it brought a thought to her head.

          

             "I assume we have to pay for this stuff, correct?” She asked.

 

            “Of course.” He replied, as though it were obvious.

 

            “Okay, but I’m broke.” She pointed out. “. . . and so are you.”

 

            He shot a glare in her direction, which she returned with an apologetic smile.

 

             “Yes, thank you.” He said, “But your mother was not.”

 

             “She was a waitress.” Patch said flatly.

 

             “Then, how’d she afford all those books?” He asked, eyebrows raised.

 

             Patch scrunched her eyebrows. It was a good question. Her mother’s entire collection of books could have filled the shelves of several public libraries. Her mother loved books. After she died and the house burned down, Patch had just assumed that the fire had taken all of the books with it, but for some inexplicable reason (which she now assumed was magic), the contents of her mother’s entire library was untouched. The social workers had all of the items moved to a storage facility, to be retrieved when Patch turned eighteen. Patch hadn’t even known about them until Charlie took her to the storage unit. The books were currently taking up several of the upstairs bedrooms in Charlie’s house.

 

             “So was she like some sort of wizard-world drug dealer or something?”

 

             Charlie laughed, and she couldn’t help but smile herself, picturing her mother, always happy, handing out dime-bags of Floo Powder in a dark alley.

 

             “No,” Charlie said, “The Ministry of Magic is based here, in London, but since they have to keep an eye on all witches and wizards, all around the world, they have different offices in different countries. Your mother was an auror for the American district.”

 

             “An auror?”

 

            “Wizard law enforcement.”

 

            “So, she was a cop.”

 

            “Sort of.” He said, and then sighed. “I really wish your mother had filled you in on some of this stuff.”

 

            “You and me both, dude.” She said, glancing at a wizard in what looked like a shimmery purple bathrobe shouting something about solid gold cauldrons. “So, where are we going?”

 

            “Gringotts.” He pointed to a large marble building at the far end of the street. “Wizard bank.”

 

             “Are wizards too good for regular banks?”

 

             “Well, some of them would like to think so.” Charlie said, “But no, they have different currency than muggles do.”

 

            They entered the large marble building to see a long corridor full of desks and hundreds of doors leading to what Patch guessed were the vaults. It was what sat at the desks that really caught her eye, though: small, clever-looking creatures with greedy eyes and spindly fingers. They sat behind the huge desks, either taking notes or speaking to clients. Charlie didn’t even blink at the sight of the creatures, merely strolled up to one that wasn’t with a customer.

 

            “Here to make an extraction, please?” He asked politely. The creature looked up as of it had just been interrupted whist doing something of extreme importance. Patch guessed that most of them looked like that all the time.

 

            “Vault number?” It asked, and Charlie answered. It then asked for something else, and Charlie slid a small gold key out of one of the folds in his wallet. Patch could see that it had been there long enough to leave an imprint on the leather. She was going to ask where the key had come from, but they were moving.

 

            The little goblin only stood about three feet tall once it hopped down from its desk, and she tried not to ogle at the small creature as it led them to one of the many doors that led out of the main hall, thinking that it would be rude.

 

            Behind the door, she expected a smaller version of the main hall: gilded and tall, with marble floors and golden sconces. What met her instead was infinitely less comforting. The goblin led both of them into a narrow tunnel of solid stone. Lit only by industrious iron torches, it reminded Patch of the path to a dungeon in a medieval castle, and the sloping nature of the tunnel gave the illusion that it was narrowing exponentially. She wasn’t the one having a problem, though.

 

            “Are you claustrophobic?” Patch asked Charlie incredulously. His breathing had shallowed and his hands were balled forcefully into fists.

 

            “Little bit.” He said in a sharp gust of breath. He was having to duck down to even fit in the tiny tunnel. “This is the worst of it though.” She got the feeling that he was reassuring himself more than anyone else.

 

            Still, she hoped that he was right. She wasn’t sure Charlie’s heart could handle another crawlspace. The air was unbearably thick, which gave the illusion that it was not there at all, that they were just breathing in solid stone, and the idea made even her feel dizzy and heavy.

 

            Charlie gave an unexpected breath of relief, and before Patch could look up to determine the cause, she was catching herself as she dropped off an abrupt step and into a much larger corridor. This one, still plain stone, ran perpendicular to the one they’d just come out of, and appeared to curve out of sight on one end, and drop out of sight at the other.

  

            “So . . . what now?” She asked, as they were all just standing there, but the little goblin made a sharp, shrill, unpleasant sound that she realized was a whistle, and she heard a noise.

 

             It was a sort of whirring, a smooth scraping sound like the grinding of wheels on a track, which was exactly what it was. A small cart sped around the corner and stopped right in front of them.

 

             “In.” The goblin barked, gesturing to what looked like an old mine cart, and they obliged. As soon as the goblin had climbed in after them, the buggy began moving.

 

             It seemed to know its own way through the passages, because there was no way (that she could see) of steering it. Once she got past the heart-stopping fear of racing blindly through underground tunnels with no way of escape, she actually started to enjoy herself. She had always wanted to go on one of those wild roller coasters that all the other kids talked about from their vacations to Six Flags and Disneyland. She imagined that this was about as close you could get without experiencing the thing itself. _Probably better, actually._ She amended, taking into consideration the fact that a goblin was sitting beside her and that said non-roller-coaster was sweeping her off in the direction of an unknown sum of money.

 

             They finally arrived at their destination—lurching to a stop and nearly throwing everyone from the cart—at a small metal door embedded in the wall. The goblin shoved the key in the lock, twisting and turning in some sort of complex pattern until the door sprung open in a puff of strange green smoke, revealing mound upon mound of gold and silver and brass coins. Patch stared at the coins, then at the goblin, then at Charlie, not sure if they had the right vault.

 

             “Dorothy was really holding out on you, huh?” He said, pleased with the astounded look on her face.

 

             The goblin held out a complimentary leather drawstring pouch to her, and then gestured to the horde of coins with a polite (though still rather unpleasant) smile.

 

             “Gold ones are Galleons,” Charlie explained while she filled the small sack with money, uncertainly at first, but with increasing enthusiasm. “Silver ones are Sickles, Brass ones are Knuts. 17 Sickles in a Galleon, 29 Knuts in a Sickle. Easy enough.” Though she was only half paying attention to him, she committed the numbers to memory.

 

             By the time she was done, the leather pouch had to weigh more than a small child. She wasn’t sure exactly how wizard money translated into American dollars, but she was fairly certain she was holding more money than she ever had in her life. And one joyous car ride later, she was surrounded by the beautiful chaos of Diagon Alley once more.

 

             “Alright,” He said looking at all the shops thoughtfully, “I suppose you’ll need uniforms first . . .” He gestured to a lavish purple and gold sign that read: _Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions._

 

             This revelation wasn’t a particularly devastating one, for Patch was utterly indifferent to what she wore, as long as skirts weren’t necessary. She detested skirts.

 

             They were the first things on the list.

 

             She suffered through being prodded as they tightened the skirt and pinned the shirts so they would fit her nonexistent bust adequately. Half an hour later, she exited the shop with a complete uniform: a black, pleated skirt, white button-up, grey sweater, tie, tights (which she detested more than skirts, if at all possible), and shiny black dress shoes.

 

             After that was sorted, they went to buy parchment and quills. She’d always wanted to write with a quill. Her mother had let her once, with the quill and ink that sat on her desk in the library, but it only resulted in a ruined piece of paper and an ink stain on the carpet that Dorothy _had_ to have used magic to remove. She did wonder why lead pencils and notebook paper weren’t acceptable, though.

 

             They exited Flourish and Blotts with far too many books for one person to manage, but between the two of them, they carried _History of Magic, Magical Theory_ , _Beginners’_ AND _Intermediate Transfiguration_ , _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ , _Magical Drafts and Potions, The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_ , _The Monster Book of Monsters_ , _Unfogging the Future_ , the first four volumes of _The Standard Book of Spells_ , and half a dozen more. At least twenty books for this year alone.

 

            Charlie left her to find the rest of her stuff while he loaded all of the books, the clothes, and the parchment and quills into one of the big fireplaces and transported them home so that they would not have to carry them. Thankfully, and with surprisingly little trouble, she managed to acquire the appropriate scales, phials, telescope, cauldron, and potion ingredients before meeting up with him again.

 

            Charlie seemed pleasantly surprised with her progress, and stopped by the fireplace once again to drop of the rest of the items at the house before continuing in the direction of a restaurant called The Leaky Cauldron for lunch, where she berated him with more questions about things she had seen and heard while shopping.

 

            He was a good sport for most of it, but she felt that her inquiries were what ultimately led to his decision to let her shop on her own for a while, once they were done eating. He announced that they would get her wand last—because it would most likely take the longest—before giving her a reassuring smile, telling her to ‘try to have some fun’, and taking off in the direction of a place called the Junk Shop, which apparently sold things like broken wands, cracked cauldrons, worn-out broomsticks, and things like that.

           

            Nevertheless, when they exited the Leaky Cauldron, she set out on her own, a little hesitant but barely able to contain her wonder at the world that had been unveiled before her.


End file.
